Can't GNOME 3 be made to look like GNOME 2? What are the advantages to MATE?

Doesn't rely on Gnome 3 which doesn't play nicely with older hardware. It's a fork of Gnome 2, lighter hardware requirements, you'll be using extensions and such designed for Gnome 2 specifically, etc. Plus you can only make Gnome 3 looks similar to Gnome 2 to a point.. still vastly different under the hood. (And if you hate Gnome 3 as much as I do, "lipstick on a pig" comes to mind. Sorry to the Gnome 3 fans.)

That said, kind of puzzled why they need this particular distro when Mint Mate is already based on Ubuntu to begin with.. kinda sorta making the same thing.

I like the sound of this. XFCE and Gnome2/Mate are both very user-friendly and light on system resources. Going to be difficult to pick between them

I've always been a fan of Gnome 2.. XFCE just feels too lightweight/limited for my personal tastes, Gnome 2 in my opinion hits the sweet spot between usability and not throwing a bajillion options at a user, still dumbfounded with the direction they're taking Gnome 3. Probably the DE I've kept on my *Nix systems the longest out of any of them with KDE being a close second just due to heavier requirements versus the older systems I typically have it running on. The Mint guys have done an excellent job bringing it forward, especially adding new functionality into the various components, Caja (Nautilus) especially. Still prefer the classic layout though.. doesn't feel right not having two bars and the "Applications/Places/System" menus in the top left, but easily adjusted.

Doesn't rely on Gnome 3 which doesn't play nicely with older hardware. It's a fork of Gnome 2, lighter hardware requirements, you'll be using extensions and such designed for Gnome 2 specifically, etc. Plus you can only make Gnome 3 looks similar to Gnome 2 to a point.. still vastly different under the hood. (And if you hate Gnome 3 as much as I do, "lipstick on a pig" comes to mind. Sorry to the Gnome 3 fans.)

That said, kind of puzzled why they need this particular distro when Mint Mate is already based on Ubuntu to begin with.. kinda sorta making the same thing.

Mint has a lot of their own non-Canonical packages included, this I guess is either a more "pure" Ubuntu + Mate experience for users who like/want Mate and want mainstream updates.

It's good for the MATE project and you'd be surprised what you can get away with in terms of under resourcing to get a full user graphical desktop with it. The same cannot be said for Ubuntu desktop these days,

Mint has a lot of their own non-Canonical packages included, this I guess is either a more "pure" Ubuntu + Mate experience for users who like/want Mate and want mainstream updates.

It's good for the MATE project and you'd be surprised what you can get away with in terms of under resourcing to get a full user graphical desktop with it. The same cannot be said for Ubuntu desktop these days,

I wonder what it is about the Linux UI that yells Linux. ... I mean sure OSX UI Screams OSX and Windows UI screams windows. But even when I see custom UI's on Linux they always scream linux.

Because people have bad taste, but that is true across the board. The biggest issue is that the default desktop environments are extremely ugly by default and changing merely the theme is only part of the issue. It also comes down to font choice, font rendering (I use Infinality personally), and other UI tweaks. No, having a huge, bulky Conky system monitor on your desktop is ugly most of the time. Useful? Sure, but it almost never looks right. Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I personally find default WIndows 7/8 to look horrible. Tons of wasted space. All of Metro is ugly in my opinion. I am one of the few who appreciated the squared corners in 8, however when the padding is so huge it is atrocious.

Suffice it to say, we can agree Windows and all Linux desktop environments are not attractive by default. OS X is close to looking nice out of the gate, but I still prefer a very customized Openbox or Xfce desktop to it.

The biggest issue is that the default desktop environments are extremely ugly by default and changing merely the theme is only part of the issue.

Ditto that, over the past ~28 years or so I've yet to find any OS that I was happy with visually out of the box.. had to change something about each and every one of them. That streak might change with KDE 5, so far really digging the look from the various early shots and mockups, see how it goes on release. Agree about the squared borders though, rather starting to like that, went and added that to my 7 desktop along with flat controls, a blue KDE-like glow around the active window, etc. *shrug* Not for everybody but I like it, that's all that matters. Haven't been a fan of desktop metering either, last time I had one going was back in the XP days, don't think I've ever used it on my *Nix boxes.. kind of silly as I rarely actually see the desktop to begin with. Cute for screenshots, but horribly impractical, got an LCD for showing that stuff.